Morning Routine

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Look familiar? It should. Sequences that show a character following their average Morning Routine are incredibly common. It's a standard story opener, for several reasons: it's a way to introduce a character immediately, it shows the normal routine (to better contrast when wackiness ensues), and it's something we're all pretty familiar with—even those of us who rue mornings.

Like the White Void Room, it's something of a cliche and is commonly perceived as an opening that serves until the plot takes hold. Then again, like all tropes, it can be used to great effect— for instance, the opening sequence of Dexter. Surprisingly, Slice of Life works can avoid this for quite some time — mainly because there's a choice of other routines.

Azumanga Daioh had this with Chiyo-chan in the episode that was focused on her, showing how she gets up early so she can prepare her lunch and then goes to wake up her parents.

Episode one of Puella Magi Madoka Magica shows Madoka's morning routine, starting with her waking up from a strange dream, waking up her family members, getting dressed, eating breakfast; all sorts of everyday normal activities. Used to show Madoka's roots in normality, and provide contrast for the changes the come.

In From Up on Poppy Hill Umi is introduced by her morning routine of making food for the family and hissing the flags. This routine is shown or varied several times again.

In Girls und Panzer, after the Action Prologue that takes place a few episodes after the start of the show, the first scene is of Miho, the main character, waking up in the morning, and hastily going through her daily routine before realizing that she's not at home anymore.

Episode 3 of Free! Dive to the Future shows Rin waking up, making breakfast, and jogging from his apartment to the Sydney Aquatic Center.

Full Metal Panic! juxtaposes Kaname's mourning routine against Sousuke's to highlight how damn weird the latter's mindset. While Kaname has exactly the routine one would expect from any Ordinary High-School Student, Sousuke wakes up under the bed immediately pointing his Pillow Pistol at a cat on his windowsill, makes himself a "satisfying breakfast" consisting of several slices of salami and a tomato, and checks to make sure he's packed an adequate amount of C4 and ammunition in his schoolbag.

Asian Animation

Simple Samosa: In the morning, the alarm clock wakes up Samosa and he gets out of bed, brushes his teeth, and takes a shower. This is shown in the episodes "Sumo Momo" and "Pimple Samosa".

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Comic Strips

Zits: One strip alternates between Jeremy and his girlfriend, showing the her putting on makeup, combing her hair, etc. while Jeremy takes several panels to emerge from sleep. The final panel has Sara, now a living exhibition of cosmetic technology, asking Jeremy how he gets his hair to look as if he got out of bed, to which he confusedly replies that he gets out of bed.

Fanfic

In Dirty Sympathy the morning of the Vera Misham trial opens with both Klavier and Apollo getting ready for the trial in their homes. They style their hair, pick out their clothes and go over their plan to have Kristoff lose the jury's sympathy to cover up that they framed him.

In Beautiful Fiction's Babylon begins with Ed and Al getting ready for the day while Edward struggles and hides his chronic pain and terminal illness. He shaves, he dries his hair using alchemy and has breakfast with Al.

Film

Legally Blonde opens with two stories during the opening credits: Elle's friends delivering a letter to her, and Elle getting ready in the morning.

The Devil Wears Prada offers not just Andy's morning routine but the routine of about a dozen other women as well, to contrast the way she gets ready to the way the other women do.

The beginning of Tangled has Rapunzel sing through her morning routine, including spending a lot of time brushing her hair.

The film Zodiac has this, complete with the child of the cartoonist confessing to swallowing his toothpaste. The sense of panic among the populace over the school bus threat is reflected in the cartoonist taking his kid away from the bus at the last minute and driving him to school.

The opening scene of Turner & Hooch shows Turner's morning routine which establishes his character as an absolute neat freak.

Shaun of the Dead had one of these at the beginning, showing the protagonist going to the store across the street to get a Coke. Later on, when the Zombie Apocalypse comes, the exact same routine is repeated... except now there are zombies and bloody traces around, which Shaun fails to notice and just grabs a Coke as usual.

Shrek starts out with what presumably is how every ogre spends their morning.

In All That Jazz, Joe Gideon's morning routine includes Vivaldi's "Concerto Alla Rustica" on cassette tape, eyedrops, smoking in the shower, taking pills with Alka-Seltzer, and finally declaring into a mirror: "It's showtime, folks!"

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy starts this way, with Arthur Dent getting out of bed and starting his routine before being interrupted by a bulldozer trying to tear his house down.

The first Harry Potter book starts off by showing the Dursleys' morning routine. ("Mr. Dursley hummed as he picked out his most boring tie for work.") Although the second chapter takes place on Dudley's birthday, it's apparently a fairly typical morning for Harry as he's woken up by Aunt Petunia and forced to make breakfast.

Live Action TV

The Dexter opening sequence is Dexter's typical morning, but shot so that his normal morning routine reminds viewers at every turn of who he really is; his floss becomes a garrotte, him pulling on his shirt becomes a sheet laid over the face of a corpse, and so on. It's very effectively creepy, and won an Emmy.

Monk did this in the opening credits for the first season. Adrian Monk's morning routine serves to demonstrate his OCD tendencies: his closet is full of identical suits, he disinfects his toothbrush with boiling water before brushing his teeth, etc.

Given an interesting twist at the very beginning of The West Wing. We see Sam wake up in the morning. Next to a prostitute. Who is asking who POTUS is - and why he has such a funny name. It's the President of the United States.

Lost. In the first episode of season two, we see a stranger (later revealed to be Desmond) going about his routine until he hears an explosion. The shock reveal is that his seemingly normal living space is actually inside the hatch that the main characters just blew up

In Season 5 we see Pierre Chang's morning routine as a member of the Dharma Initiative.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The morning after demons steal everyone's voices in "Hush", Buffy goes through her morning routine in the fraternity dorm, noting only a distraught woman rushing past. It's only when she tries to talk to Willow that she realises something is very wrong.

Angel. The A Day in the Limelight episode "Harms Way" shows Harmony's morning routine with a uniquely vampire twist — she vamps out so she can brush her teeth easier (not easy to do when you can't see yourself in the mirror) and uses her Super Strength to pick up a dresser to retrieve her shoe.

The second season opener for Community quickly flashes through all the rooms of the various study group members as they get up. Their decor and morning routine tells us a lot about them (e.g. Jeff is exercising in an almost bare room, Shirley is cuddling with her two children, Pierce has a trippy looking water-mattress, Annie's is perfectly pretty and organised, but has bars on the window, etc.)

The Good Place episode "Don't Let The Good Life Pass You By" opens with a montage Doug Forcett going about his morning routine set to the Mama Cass song of the same name. The editing and choice of music are a reference to the Lost episode mentioned above.

Recycled In Space when Edward Baldwin is shown going through his daily routine while alone on the Moon base. This suggests that he's holding it together despite everything that's happened, but unwanted interuptions to his routine (like a Soviet cosmonaut infringing on 'American' territory) soon bring out the worse in him.

Music

In Rebecca Black's infamous Friday music video, she sings about getting up, getting fresh, and eating cereal. Although she does none of this.

Woke up, fell out of bed Dragged a comb across my head Found my way downstairs and drank a cup And looking up I noticed I was late Found my coat and grabbed my hat Made the bus in seconds flat.

This also happens at the beginning of Kesha's "Tik Tok."

Jewel's "You Were Meant For Me"

I hear the clock, it's six a.m. I feel so far from where I've been I got my eggs I got my pancakes too I got my maple syrup, everything but you. I break the yolks, make a smiley face I kinda like it in my brand new place I wipe the spots off the mirror Don't leave the keys in the door

The main character of the Gamecube Custom Robo gets up to go to work each morning. Getting dressed takes three seconds. But whether he gets woken up by his landlady, by cellphone, or by himself carries some amusement.

Ralph Wolf has his morning routine, from wake-up to clocking in for work, down to a Rube Goldberg science in one of Chuck Jones' wolf/sheepdog installments.

The Shaun the Sheep opening credits show a rooster crowing, and then Shaun, Blitzer and the Farmer all getting up and getting ready for the day, with the Farmer shaving, Blitzer putting on deoderant and Shaun blow drying his wool, then Blitzer standing to attention as the Farmer leaves the farmhouse, and getting hit with the door, while Shaun leads the other sheep in aerobics, and finally Blitzer grabbing a cup of tea while the Farmer unlocks the barn and the flock immediately start acting like normal sheep. Two variations on the scene also appear in The Movie.

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